


A Wreath

by Raneia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25531120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raneia/pseuds/Raneia
Summary: Luna, Neville and Snape bring Lupin back from the dead.We die with the dying;See, they depart, and we go with them.We are born with the dead:See, they return, and bring us with them.Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot
Relationships: Neville Longbottom & Luna Lovegood, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	A Wreath

It is Luna who finds the stone, down in the forest, glittering black in the leaf mould and the pine. She picks it up and holds it in her palm, feels it pulse deeply and emit the warm heavy scent of every person she has ever known. She folds her handkerchief three times, wraps the stone inside and puts it in her pocket with all the lumps of muggle gum, the juniper and squigglewort, the sprig of mistletoe.

That night in the Great Hall she opens her palm under Neville's nose, grinning, closes it again, opens it, like morse code.

He grabs her wrist. "Is that...? What is that?"

"I found it. Down in the woods. Isn't it beautiful Neville?"

Neville's brow creases. "Luna..."

"You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"But..."

She presses his hand in hers. "Don't tell anyone."

…

Neville agrees, like he always does, but this time it is on one condition.

He takes her down to the greenhouses first thing in the morning, holds aside the veil of spleenwort, the spears of digitalis, to let her past. They have been here so many times before in secret, it is like a pattern; drawing her along the rows of mandrake and marigold, through the maze of allotments, all architectural artichokes and cautious, creeping speedwell until finally they reach the bank of wolfsbane, all hanging their hooded heads in sorrow.

"Here," he says, stashing the stone down in among the flowers, down in the warm, wet earth. "Nobody comes here anymore."

Luna's lips quirk and she reaches for him. Neville turns his red face away.

“But Professor Snape--"

"--Lupin's dead. He won't come here anymore."

…

Harry slopes into Snape's workroom, collapses glumly in to the mossy velvet chair and stays there, glaring, until Snape loses patience and insists he make himself useful. So he silently cuts ingredients without enthusiasm or skill. Snape prefers it that way - if he must put up with Potter at all, a grunt or two is preferable to conversation or, god forbid, speaking about one's emotions.

Harry, for his part, has spent the past few weeks going out to the quidditch pitch in the rain and trying to get himself killed. He has made himself a sash out of the Black family tree, the section where Sirius' blackened face stares out, and wears it at all times so that now it has become threadbare and greasy. He tells himself he'd rather die than come here all the time but then at night he lies and thinks about Snape, resolutely prickly and unpleasant, the same as always and yet not the same at all.

It irritates Snape how his concentration wavers, how one moment he can be explaining the merits of gillyweed over floxwort to a bunch of airhead fifth years and the next he will have quite lost his place.

"You're thinking about her now, aren't you?" Harry sneers, jolting Snape out of his thoughts.

He looks down at the green roots, then up again at the bank of brown bracken and willow outside his window. Lupin's brown robes--

He clears his throat. "Yes."

...

Harry practically moves in. Luna brings them jars of homemade cloudberry jam, a box of flying tripslip, full english breakfasts, which Snape picks at disgustedly and Harry scoffs down like a starving man. She pops in at inopportune moments and stands grinning inanely at them both, enquiring after their health. What is there to say, really?

She leaves things, gifts, at least Snape assumes they are from her. Offers to prune the bonsai using her charmed padded scissors, brews Snape his funny seaweed tea, waters the succulents, offspring of those he has managed to kill over the past weeks.

She notices things too; the book on juvenile lycanthropes lying hidden under a stack of unmarked essays, a branch from the Whomping Willow, a wand that is not Snape’s own lying unused on his desk, a postcard of the north portal of Notre Dame.

And then she sees him one evening down at the greenhouses, tending the wolfsbane, cutting back the old and letting the new shoots spring forth. She holds her breath as he works, oblivious to the power buried deep in that cool black loam. When the sun is a crimson line on the horizon, Luna conjures a thin trail of lupins along his path back to the school. He pauses for a long time in front of the first of the coloured flowers, and then carries on inside.

When she plunges her hands into the earth, the stone rises up to find her. On her way back she picks a lupin and carries it home, like a sword. She goes to Professor Snape's office that night, steals inside and puts the stone on his desk, edges the wand, the willow branch and the lupin to form a kind of protective triangle around it.

…

It is Harry who finds the stone. Harry who smells of a farmyard and whose hands shake.

"What were you planning to do," he blurts out, his voice breaking."Take her away from my Dad once and for all?"

"Don't be a damn fool Potter." Snape nudges the lupin with a finger, examines it. The branch and wand he knows.

"What?" Harry splutters, indignantly. "What is it?"

He sighs. "Nothing that concerns you."

When Harry is gone Snape searches the room, checks for traces of magic or concealment charms or evidence of some typically juvenile prank but there is none. He lifts the stone, puts it aside.

…

Luna situates herself on Snape’s tall oak stool, twines her striped woollen ankles around the legs and begins to slice a gurdyroot with a precision and care at odds with her usual character.

"Did they ever use the Crutiatus Curse on you, Professor?" she says, innocently.

Snape raises an eyebrow, acclimatising to Luna's non-sequiturs. "Of course. Cruciatus is child's play to Voldemort."

"You must have been very brave."

"Bravery barely came into it."

"But it hurt, though? When the snake bit you?"

He pauses. "Yes."

"Professor Snape?"

"Mhmm?"

"If you could have one thing, anything, what would you ask for?"

"I have all I require."

"But if you could have anything? If there were a spell, a piece of magic--"

Snape stops. "You needn’t pretend any longer, Miss Lovegood." He takes a breath, lowers his voice. "Besides, even if a spirit _might_ be summoned, there is no reason to assume it would wish to return. It is the greatest cruelty of all to deny someone peace. Contrary to popular opinion, even I am not capable of that."

Luna looks up at him, determined. "I would wish for Lovegood House to be rebuilt and for the moon to hang above it again and for all our friends to come home." She puts her hand carefully over his. "But only if they wanted to come."

Snape looks down at their hands. Finally, under what he feels is great duress, he says: "I would wish for the same."

...

Despite Snape taking the stone back, despite him throwing it in the lake along with the blasted squid and the weed and the mermaids, despite all of this, at Michaelmas, a shape comes out of the woods, not a woodsman but a man or a creature who has been on the longest journey.

A wolf, but one that stands up like a man. His clothes are tattered, he wears a brown velveteen robe, the scars on his face are a little deeper than they had been before. He comes out of the woods and out of time, into the late afternoon snow, walking with a certain urgency along the hedgerow and up through the allotments, past the wolfsbane, hastily covered against the frost, through the wooden gate…

Home.

…

Lupin stands like a child while Snape peels off his sodden robes, removes dirt and thorns and applies a mild arnica to the cuts on Lupin's palms. Lupin is quiet, watching Snape as he works. It is suddenly very clear, all those years and years of actions taken to mean one thing when they meant quite another. It is clear now.

"So... not Lily, after all," he says and Snape looks at him, stricken. Lupin turns his hands over obediently. After a while with no response, he leans down to peer under Snape's hair. "I am so glad, Severus. Hm?" He laughs, this soft, breathless laugh. "I am so bloody glad."

…

Luna leaves Neville, Ron and Harry, dreamy and teenaged, eating their cereal and levitates a tray of tea, her porridge bowl and one for Professor Snape, floating it along the corridors behind her. She dreamt last night of her father's house being put together again brick by brick and of the moon hanging still and silent in the sky. She dreamt of Neville in the moonlit garden.

As she draws closer she hears the sound of a voice, light and tired and charming, coming from Snape's rooms. She peeks through the door and there is Professor Lupin, laid out along Snape's tapestry sofa like he has never been away, one ankle crossed over the other, charmed socks, his hands folded in his lap. His face is tired but he talks animatedly to Snape, who stands still and straight, clutching the edge of his desk, face pale with stress and disbelief and something utterly, utterly unrecognisable.

The tray clatters to the ground. Remus looks up at once and his face changes, like he has put on a mask.

"Ah, Luna, wonderful," Remus says, cheerfully, rubbing his hands together. He helps her pick everything up and transform it back to how it should be. "Nothing like a hearty breakfast to start the day, eh Severus?"

Snape swallows. "You must conserve your strength Lupin."

"Nonsense!" he says, straightening, patting his stomach. "Constitution of an ox.”

"Indeed," Snape says, sceptically, and looks over at Luna, whose eyes are like saucers.

"Professor Lupin," she says, breathlessly. She looks at Snape, then back. "You're supposed to be dead," she tells him.

Snape looks away and Lupin casts an apologetic glance at him.

"Yes, well, it really is the most extraordinary thing," he laughs awkwardly and looks back up at Snape. His face softens. "Quite extraordinary."


End file.
